


You Play, You Pay

by gnawingsuspicion



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic, F/M, Food Issues, Hidden Abigail - Freeform, Murder Family, Power Dynamics, drugged lemonade, hannigail, pre-mizomuno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-03-02 12:33:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13318179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnawingsuspicion/pseuds/gnawingsuspicion
Summary: Abigail may be Hannibal's captive, but she's nobody's victim.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic since I was a teenager. Be gentle with me.

Abigail has been dead for three days when she finally feels like eating. It’s quiet in the house. Even with the mid-morning light filtering in, a shadow hangs over this place that nothing can quite chase away. It’s a diorama of a home, a carefully crafted set built to trick visitors into thinking someone human lives here. Every detail another part of the mask.  
  
Hannibal is gone. By her bed is a sparkling gold tray piled with ornate gold dishes, a bountiful breakfast meticulously displayed. He knows she hasn't properly eaten. She blinks the sleep from her eyes as she regards it, finding a small, elegant note on a tiny gold dish.  
  
It reads:  
  
“Dear Abigail,  
I hope you are feeling better. If the dish is cool by the time you wake, use the oven to heat it up. I will be out for most of the day. Feel free to occupy yourself with the library. I suspect I need not remind you to stay in the house.  
Fondly,  
Hannibal”  
  
His signature is tidy, meticulous, only allowing itself the slightest loops. It’s a tease, a quality of his rarely observed by anyone living to tell it. She knows that beneath the black ichor of his work, there is a playfulness, an invitation. She turns the thick paper over in her hands, running her fingertips across its woven texture. She idly wonders which cost more - his pens, or his knives.  
  
—  
  
The day after she dies, she's too delirious to eat. He’s given her pain medication for her ear, but she knows well enough to know it’s more than that. It keeps her thoughts disconnected, unclear. She doesn’t remember falling asleep. It’s been days of flickering consciousness, a world in and out of dreams. She sees her father. She stands with Will in a stream, the long tether of his fishing line reaching out to the horizon. There are antlers, woods, blood, sunlight dappled through windows. Sharp cords of pain and a sky without stars.  
  
At some point on the second day, Hannibal gently pulls her from bed and wraps her in a soft dark robe. The feeling is so foreign, she goes limp and lets him guide her. This isn't entirely part of her plan, but that can wait. He bathes her in the large clawfoot tub, the water milky and smelling of lavender. There’s mint lemonade on a tray and when he hands it to her she drinks it eagerly, her lips and tongue parched. She knows it’s drugged, but she doesn’t care. The distant thrum of pain is getting closer and she isn’t ready to deal with it yet. Besides, she isn't well enough to be clever.  
  
He washes her hair and cleans her ear delicately. It stings, but already the warm tendrils of his painkillers are twining up to quiet her. His voice is so steady and gentle. She tries to catch hold of what he’s saying but she bobs in the current of it. It’s French. No, Italian?  
  
_“E si specchia nel mare,”_  
  
She knows only a little French and Spanish and couldn’t translate even if she had her faculties. The sound is strange and new, half of it dim and muffled where her ear used to be. Sun shines through the window so that even with her eyes closed, the world is red. He finishes whatever he’s reciting and pauses. A wet finger trails along her collarbone, her shoulder, sweeping her hair across it. She smiles. _If he’s going to kill me, let him do it, and let the water take me somewhere warm for once. I’ve been cold for so long._  
  
Her name brings her from her reverie. He is rousing her from the bath.  
  
“Abigail, hold onto me.”  
  
Her name in his mouth is like melting chocolate. He lifts her from the bath and wraps her once again in a large, impossibly soft towel. _Such luxury for a man who eats people,_ she thinks. _I wonder if anyone’s ever called him on all this overcompensating._  
  
“Your towel’s… nice,” she gurgles, surprised at the dissonance between her inner monologue and her awkward, fumbling words. Strong lemonade.  
  
“Hush, Abigail.”  
  
He replaces the towel with a robe and returns her gently to bed. He pulls the covers over her. She absently reaches for her ear and he nudges her hand away. The dark cavern of sleep beckons her and she welcomes it. He covers her bandage with her hair. The last thing she feels before she feels nothing is Hannibal’s extended finger touching, barely touching, the angry scar across her throat.

She smiles.

—  
  
She was complicit. She agreed to this. He had lifted her off the table like she weighed nothing. Explained his plan. His arms wrapped around her and she asked, a rabbit dipping one toe into the fox’s den, “Can I push the button?” She had felt his grin behind her. Losing a piece of herself felt insignificant compared to how he normally treated houseguests. This was her price. _You play, you pay._ She knew what it meant to know him. At least, as well as she could.  
  
Abigail was afraid of Hannibal because she was smart. She was curious about him and found his rippling dichotomies fascinating, but she never forgot what he was. Still, there was a tentative safety in his company; while her father had killed to keep himself from hurting her, Hannibal seemed to have no temptations in that direction. Hannibal killed the rude and unsavory. Abigail was clever, sweet and eager. He didn’t look at her the way her father had, with a furious and barely suppressed hunger. Odd, considering. No, her new father figure… if that’s what he was… regarded her with interest and, on occasion, pride.  
  
She knew he wanted her to be a killer. When he’d taken her ear and her life, she had agreed in her own way to give him control. Only, for the first time, she had her own agenda. Abigail had had so little power for so many years, acting as a puppet for her father, never able to process or understand her own desires. Even if Hannibal wanted her to become something she wasn't, not exactly, she could use him to her advantage. These weren’t the choices she’d expected to face so early in her life, but when abnormal is your normal from childhood, you learn to adapt.  
  
There were parts of the kill she liked. The power. The precision. The blood. There were parts she hated, too, parts that made her sick to gasping, waking up with nightmares in a cold sweat. She hated killing girls that looked like her. She hated doing it for her father. She hated baiting them and the way he used them to make things. He had seen them as sacrifices and all she had seen were effigies, girls taken too young, their futures gutted right out of them.  
  
If she killed, she would kill men like him. Men who saw God in their reflection and loved only the sound of their own voices. Fathers with ugly hearts, husbands drunk with rage looking for something small to soften their fists on. Cops who walked free after violent crimes. Abigail dreamt of her hands around their throats, appalled that they were being ripped from the world by a small, soft-eyed girl. By then, she would be strong. Fast. Skilled with knives in ways she couldn’t yet imagine, and she had already used several expertly. She would exorcise her demons on demons themselves and sleep soundly. She would kill men like Hannibal.  
  
Abigail knew If she went to live with him, he would train her. He would start subtly and begin to edge it out of her. The practiced patience would drive him, give him purpose. Self-restraint got him up in the morning, she knew. This man, this murdering cannibal, couldn’t abide the wrong place setting or an ill-fitted suit. She would make it take forever. Years, if she had to. Learn everything she could and stay alive. Tease him. Play with him. Be the promising young protégé he wanted and bat her eyelashes ever-so-slightly.  
  
And, so.  
  
“Can I push the button?”  
  
—  
  
She eats her breakfast on the third day with her bedroom door wide open. It's cold, but the thought of being alone in Hannibal's kitchen just yet is a little much. She is alert and lucid for the first time since her operation. On instinct, she picks around the meat on the dish, then pauses. _No. If I’m going to do this, I’ll do this._ She bites, savoring the taste. Eve, plucking the apple right off the tree, the juices running down her chin. It’s delicious.  
  
_I bet he would’ve killed me if I was vegetarian._  
  
She drinks glass after glass of water, trying to clear her head. It’s mid-morning. There are no clocks, no phones, certainly no connection to the outside world. Hannibal’s too smart for that. He’ll raise her on books and lectures under the guise of an elegant education while really keeping her disconnected from anyone who might rescue her. That’s alright. She’s dead, anyway. She doesn’t need rescuing.  
  
In the back of her mind, she knows Will is being framed. Is he already in prison, or that institution? Has Hannibal changed his mind and turned him into topiary? No, he loves him too much for that - this she knows with unflagging certainty. She is an affectionate pet, he is the thorn in Hannibal’s side. This would bode ill for him if Hannibal didn’t have such a decadent, masochistic streak. Abigail rolls her eyes. _If they’d only just kiss and get it over with, they could quit this game of chess._  
  
Of course, Hannibal doesn’t want that. He loves to play, just like anyone who always wins.  
  
She wonders if she could write to Will. The thought is dismissed instantly - she has no stamps and can’t leave the house. The doors are locked, certainly, but she’s sure there are measures besides. If she left, someone would die. Someone she cared about. That list was small, and she didn’t intend to make it any smaller.  
  
So she picks out an outfit, something neat and proper and docile, tying a tidy silk scarf around her neck. Pausing, she changes her mind, and undoes it. The red fabric slips to the floor. She leaves it where it lies - a purposeful spot of disorder in an otherwise immaculate room. _Boredom is the natural evolution of obedience,_ she muses. _I cannot let him get bored._

She leaves her scar exposed.  
  
When he comes home, she is sitting at the desk in his office, reading a lengthy book on anatomy that Hannibal has inscribed with that same tight handwriting. _“Incision point 2mm higher.” “Best if tenderized.”_ Her last thought before she closes the volume is: _What a laugh it would be to stroll into the FBI with this and toss it casually onto Jack Crawford’s desk. “Here you go, idiots. Did you think his name rhymes by accident? By the way, I’m alive!”_  
  
She makes no attempt to hide the book, instead placing it squarely on his desk. Her hair is lightly pinned away from her face, and her neck is glowing in the early moonlight. Hannibal pauses at the doorway, regarding her.  
  
“Abigail, you look lovely. Was your day restful?”  
  
She smiles, her eyes sparkling. “Exquisite.”  
  
“Would you like to help me prepare dinner, or am I disturbing your reading?”  
  
Her face doesn’t betray her, not anymore. Her mind races, wondering what minor infraction landed dinner on her plate this evening. Parking ticket? Difficult patient? If she had anyone left in the world to seek vengeance on, she’d tell him they’d returned a library book dog-eared and stained and wait for the pot roast to appear.  
  
All the same, the thought of Hannibal killing for her… squeezing the life from some unfortunate soul because they had wronged her, his normally expressionless eyes glimmering with a hint of real anger on behalf of his beloved Abigail… she swirls it around in her mind like a cherry stem on her tongue. It isn't all bad.  
  
“Of course not. What’s on the menu?”  
  
“Would you like to know?”  
  
She pauses. _Can’t be too eager._  
  
“If it’s all the same, perhaps not… yet. I’ll do the vegetables.”  
  
He grins.  
  
“As you wish.”  
  
It’s a rare moment when she knows what he’s thinking, but she can practically hear it: _She said ‘yet.’_ She has to give him just enough. The lure can’t be too obvious. She thinks about her dream, of Will standing in the stream teaching her to fish, and wonders if he’d be joining them for dinner if he’d only understood the game.  
  
_You play, you pay._  
  
“Would you like some wine with dinner?”  
  
But Abigail has already paid.  
  
“Sure, that sounds lovely.”  
  
Now, it’s time to play.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abigail has changed without realizing, not for the first time.

Abigail sits across from Hannibal at the long, ominous table. A festive centerpiece divides them. They are cautious animals, regarding each other through the brush.  
  
Dinnertime.  
  
Her plate is overflowing with food. It isn’t until she smells it that she realizes she hasn’t eaten anything properly warm in days, and her stomach growls its complaints. Hannibal hears it from across the table.  
  
“Hungry?”  
  
“Apparently.”  
  
She scans her plate. The largest item is half a roast chicken, crisp and golden with a sprig of rosemary placed decoratively at its side. There are mashed potatoes, green beans, a small salad — this isn’t his usual fare. And that is unmistakably _actual_ chicken.  
  
Comfort food.  
  
“This isn’t what I expected.”  
  
He cocks his head just enough. “And what did you expect, Abigail?”  
  
There’s her name again, swirling around his tongue. The toes of her right foot clench and unclench in her suede kitten heels. She chastises herself: _Stop that._  
  
“Something… delicate.”  
  
He grins. “You’ve gone without a decent meal since you lost your ear. I thought you could use something familiar.”  
  
Lost. That’s one way to put it. She winces — without thinking, she’s raised her hand to the side of her head and graced the bandage with her fingertips. Hannibal tuts his disapproval.  
  
“Give it time to heal. Eat up. You’ll feel better.”  
  
She nods. As she lifts a forkful of dinner to her mouth, she realizes that the centerpiece obscures Hannibal’s plate. He catches her making this calculation and the smallest hint of pride dances across his face.

She loses her appetite.  
  
They are, at all times, having two conversations: one aloud, laced with double-entendres and wordplay; and one silent, comprised of meaningful looks. Despite herself, Abigail feels a swell of pride — that she, so young, could keep her pieces on the board this long.  
  
This is how she’ll win. To outsmart him, she has to play dumb. She pushes forkfuls of food around her plate but barely eats. Her stomach hurts too much, anyway.  
  
Instead of wine he offers her a sparkling golden cider. He makes a point to open the bottle in front of her and pour it into a crystal tulip glass: This isn’t drugged.

He’s keeping her on her toes. _Trust me, trust me, trust me._ It would be a mistake to oblige, but a deadlier one to decline. She smiles, thanks him, and drinks deeply. It's delicious, but the acidity on her empty stomach burns. She buries a grimace beneath a charming smile.  
  
For dessert, he brings her flourless chocolate cake. There's no getting away from this: He watches as she swallows every bite, his tongue scraping across his eyeteeth as her throat moves under that vicious, vibrant scar.   
  
—  
  
The next morning, Hannibal is gone and breakfast waits on its golden dish yet again. It is small — a poached egg, some greens, a slice of French bread — and, as she had mentioned, _delicate._  
  
The only note this time is brief:  
  
“Dear Abigail,  
Business to attend to until mid-afternoon. Enjoy yourself.  
Fondly,  
Hannibal.”  
  
She nearly swallows the bread whole, but again, her stomach protests. She chews it painfully, trying her best to keep it down. What's wrong with her?  
  
The house is empty. Her door has been left open again, just a crack. She wonders how she keeps sleeping through his entrances — back home, anything could wake her. Her father sometimes hovered at her doorway when he thought she was out cold, and Abigail’s hand would curl around the pocket knife she hid beneath her pillow, just in case. Does she feel safe here, or was it something in the food? Did she even eat enough to be dosed?

Those questions are too much this early in the day, so she decides to pad downstairs in search of caffeine.  
  
She reaches the kitchen and replays the scene in her mind of Hannibal throwing that potato in the air and catching it on his knife. The tea he’d brought her. The cup breaking. He was a monster. He was so _attentive._  
  
Her pajamas are a button-up top and cotton shorts, and it’s frigid in here. She wanders around to the den and grabs a blanket, wrapping herself awkwardly in it. She manages to find coffee and a french press but no grinder for the beans, so she mashes them in a mortar and pestle and boils water in a pot on the stove. She’s glad he isn’t here to see her, bundled up with her hair in a messy knot, making coffee out of found parts.  
  
It comes out piping hot and disgusting.  
  
She wanders back into the den, peering at the rows and rows of volumes. She pulls at a few, curious to see if he leaves any evidence out in the open, but they’re mostly innocuous. Nothing a former-doctor-now-psychologist wouldn’t have: books on anatomy, the human psyche, methods of hypnosis, treatises on various mental illnesses. He hides in plain sight so expertly. Some day, she’ll do the same.  
  
The annotated textbook she’d left out so purposefully on his desk is gone. In its stead, his fountain pens are aligned in neat little rows. She turns one fifteen degrees to the right and grins. She leaves the room.  
  
The morning ticks by without incident. Abigail bathes, reads, explores. For lunch she makes a peanut butter sandwich, although even the basic ingredients come from some organic French bakery and barely satisfy her. She searches around for snacks, but everything is raw, unprepared, or packaged too carefully to be disturbed without notice. Her ear hurts. She stares out the window, her stomach growling.  
  
When two o-clock ticks by and Hannibal still hasn’t returned, she takes a risk and opens the door to his bedroom. It looks exactly how she’d pictured it, complete with a massive king-sized bed and huge, ornate wardrobe. The walls and floor are dark and enveloping.  
  
The rabbit, tiptoeing all the way into the fox’s empty den.  
  
She opens the wardrobe and gasps. Dozens of suits and shirts arranged meticulously in silk and wool, brocade and check, ties hung by color and pattern like sparkling jewels. She picks up one of his shirts — deep purple, satin, surely more expensive than anything she’s ever worn. Her hands run over the fabric, feeling each thread. She closes her eyes.  
  
When she opens them, the door to the wardrobe has half-closed. In the mirror, she laughs — still swaddled in a blanket, her feet bare, holding this magnificent shirt in a state of awe. Her bandage pokes out from beneath her brown nest of hair and she can see blood, the tiniest pinprick. It’s shockingly red against the clean, medical white. She reaches to touch it but stops short.  
  
The pain makes her nose wrinkle. She blinks a few times, focusing. The shirt is returned to its drawer and she closes the wardrobe.  
  
Abigail is faced with herself yet again. She moves closer to the mirror and drops her blanket to the floor, and the sight is like waking from a dream into a nightmare.  
  
She’s lost weight and her skin is dull. Her hair has gone limp, the ends split, and her eyes are somehow both puffy and sunken at once. The bones of her wrists protrude, the purple-lined skin stretched taut. This isn’t her body. Her ear aches. She runs a hand across her stomach and feels her hipbones jutting out angrily. How can she have changed this much without noticing, and in such a short time?

She goes over the last few days in her mind. The meals left unfinished, the gallons and gallons of water that left her parched. Slipping in and out of consciousness. When was the last time she ate?  
  
Cautiously, she unbuttons her shirt. Her nails are chipped, the skin dry and cracked. Every moment she is aware of some new fault, some transformation she’s undergone. With her top unfastened, she looks at her soft cotton bralette. It’s too big. She’s too small. She feels sick.  
  
How did this happen?  
  
She whips the door open again, so fast the mirror nearly shatters. Her top and shorts go flying into a heap in the corner. Every drawer is yanked open, each hanger rattled, until she finds it.  
  
The shirt is silk, the wide collar pressed crisply into shape. It is a deep, shimmering, blood-wine red and she’s quite certain it’s large enough to drown her vanishing frame. She doesn’t even undo it all the way, just slips the top three buttons through their loops and pulls it over her head, wincing as it grazes her wound. She shuts the door again.  
  
Abigail sees a girl drenched in blood. It comes from her ear, her neck; from her fingers and wrists, her purple veins pouring themselves free. Her sister self, this skeletal girl, opens her mouth and the sound is like water over a stone.  
  
“You’ll never be free.”  
  
Her vision is cut short by the front door slamming. Abigail panics, searching around for her abandoned pajamas. Footsteps calmly ascend the stairs.  
  
“Abigail? Are you up here? Forgive my lateness.”  
  
She can do nothing but freeze. She closes her eyes and tries to will herself out of existence.  
  
His bedroom door opens.  
  
“I was thinking that for dinner, we could—“  
  
Hannibal finds the spectre of a girl, haunted and hollow, draped in red and shaking. Her hands are curled inside the sleeves of one of his better shirts. It hangs halfway down her thighs. She is so frail and terrified, it repulses him for a moment. He steers the feeling toward concern.  
  
“Abigail, what are you doing?”

“I-I’m sorry, Hannibal. I don’t know. I just came in here, and…”  
  
He walks towards her.  
  
“What did you see?”  
  
“A ghost.”  
  
She looks up into his eyes, forever searching for humanity that only comes in flickers. His brow is knit. He actually looks… worried.  
  
“Show me.”  
  
Abigail wrenches herself from his gaze and slowly, cautiously turns to the mirror. Her bare feet pad on the carpet, quiet as a whisper. Hannibal stands behind her, watching.  
  
“I only see a beautiful young woman in a stolen shirt.”  
  
Tears threaten to give her away. She chokes her words out.  
  
“I see death.”  
  
Hannibal puts a hand on her shoulder and she watches him, watching her. Under his fingers she feels the bones of her shoulder, sharp and angry.  
  
“Abigail…”  
  
She closes her eyes for a moment to swallow the sound of her name, less comforting in this moment.   
  
“All I can see is death.”  
  
He parts his lips as if to speak — he is not in control of this scene, and that unnerves him — but she quiets him as she reaches for the topmost button. She pops it through the loop, working her fingers downward. She takes the next button, and the next, as Hannibal shifts almost imperceptibly from one foot to the other. He does not move to stop her or speak. She has his attention.  
  
When she reaches the last button, she pulls the shirt open to show him. He sees. Her ribs. Her stomach. Her hipbones. The way the fabric of her underthings clings weakly to her frame. His eyes travel up to her face and suddenly he can see how sunken, how tired she is.

She’s starving.  
  
“Abigail, I am so sorry. I have been neglecting your care.”  
  
Without thinking, she begins to cry.  
  
“I am dead, Hannibal. There’s nothing left of me.”  
  
In a swift motion he is in front of her and pressing her to him. He carefully avoids her ear, noticing that her bandage has been disturbed and is stained to match the shirt. Her tears become sobs, her body wracked with grief. As she cries, the pain worsens, and she is caught in a loop of despair. Hannibal puts his arm to her back and tries, in a way so unfamiliar to him, to comfort her.  
  
“You are very much alive. I promise you that. I have not given you everything you require, and that will change tonight.”  
  
Her sobs begin to quiet. Her face is wet and she wipes at it with her hands, trying futilely not to stain his shirt.  
  
He breathes into her hair. “You are precious to me. I would give you the world if you asked for it.”  
  
 _Trust me. Trust me. Trust me._

His hands move down to hold her by the waist. The world, but not her freedom.  
  
“Hannibal.”  
  
The name is barely a whisper, spoken right to his heart. Her palm is splayed flat across his chest. She can heart a soft, slow beating.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
She closes her eyes, and makes a decision.  
  
“I’m hungry.”


End file.
